They are dirt cheap ($16) and you can test before you touch it. You just have to put it near it and it chirps. All the electricians use them. The reason I tell you to get this is because sometimes stuff is crosswired. You would be shocked at what people do - you turned it off and thought it wasnt hot any longer and surprise!

On certain things I will turn off the main to the house, than you know its not on.

Certain things I wont do which is messing with the main into the house. Everything else I will do. Just make sure you follow safety practices and it will be ok.

Household electrical work doesn't demand any real talents. It's all rote, easily learned principles. And not that many principles and ideas. If you're an IT or engineering graduate it is 1/1000 of the rigor of technology work.

I disagree about the talents - a lot of electrical work has to do with experience. There is the easy way and the hard way to do things. Do to experience electricians know the easy way .

But I do agree that its far easier than IT. AT the end of the day an electrician goes home without being on call and having to worry about being laid off.

About not needing talents, I meant that there's no natural inborn inclination to perform electrical work. Well, with the exception of having logic and being able to follow instructions and general principles.

IE, you don't have to be an aspie to do competent electrical work, unlike IT, and it probably doesn't even help.

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About not needing talents, I meant that there's no natural inborn inclination to perform electrical work. Well, with the exception of having logic and being able to follow instructions and general principles.

IE, you don't have to be an aspie to do competent electrical work, unlike IT, and it probably doesn't even help.

I understand what you mean, its not art or creativity we are talking about. Though I have to say I have seen some hairy stuff with electricity that requires you to have intelligence. Maybe not aspie IT tard intelligence but intelligence just the same.

My sister had a whole house generator installed - 20kW that ran off natural gas. Has a full blown automatic transfer switch. You lose power, it counts to 10 and than fires up the generator by itself. Power comes back, it hangs on for like 2 minutes than switches back.

The amount of engineering between the gas and power lines was significant. Definitely not a trivial project for someone who just is an electrician dabbler like yours truly.

Its not hard to pick it up. I know you can do it as you are smart. I knew a lot of it from years and years of being around it but there is stuff I didn't know so I got this book many years ago:

Electrical Wiring Residential by Ray C. Mullin.

This is the book that electricians learn from in school. If you buy it new its like $100+ but you can get a copy off of Ebay for $10. No joke. You don't need the latest one which has all the current electrical codes. The codes keep changing all the time. Any book from the last 10 years is good enough. As LEDs are evolving so rapidly they are not typically in the book anyway.

Yes Lumens is a funny thing. I have seen the same thing myself. Kelvin measures the color temperature of the light I typically try to install recessed lights of about 3500-4000 kelvin. To low a temperature the color of the light is more golden, to bright of a temperature - like 5000-6000 its very harsh bright bluefish light.

You can see the color of the light in this picture:

This is very cool. I buy around 5000K. I think sunlight is 3500K or so. I've noticed that all things being equal, 5500K and above actually generates more lumens - given the same Amps, the same everything but the color rendition really sucks.

I visited this local battery store, they happened to have some unusual LED bulbs. I got this weird green bulb on sale. For the X-mas season. Consumes just a few bucks annually. It's actually bright green neon type green, very light green, closer to white really than to green.

There is something about the design of the LED where they emit more lumens in the white to blue spectrum. And are less efficient in the 3500K spectrum.

I can respect that kind of setup. I'd love to have it but can't justify that kind of upfront cost.

Offhand, I'd say that you're rerouting the main power through the gen set's utility box/switchover box.

The house power in a circuit breaker box is a couple of bus bars behind the breakers against the back of the box.

It was pricey - like $9k and $5K of that was for the generator, the transfer switch was like $600 by itself. Here in the people's republic of NJ it would have been even more except the electrician is pals with her husband so they got hooked up. My sister didn't have power for 14 days during Sandy and they now have an elderly person living with them that has stuff that requires power. That is why she got it. It will help on the resale of the house if someday she sells it.

The installation is hairy - the intelligent transfer switch is like 3 feet tall and 1 1/2 feet wide, bolted to the outside of the house. There is a lot stuff in it - more than I would have thought. Both the main from the electric company and power supply from the generator comes into it and it monitors the power supply coming into the house. If the power drops it automatically switches over and starts the generator. You can over ride it of course and make it flip back and forth.

The gas main is 2 inches in diameter into the generator which required a whole lot of piping. She was fortunate because her gas and electric are in the same corner of the basement where all the utilities come in. So the plumber and electrician didn't have to run new wire and pipe across the basement.

My friend when he saw it asked if we had a bunker in the yard - are you building za rockets, das good?

Its not hard to pick it up. I know you can do it as you are smart. I knew a lot of it from years and years of being around it but there is stuff I didn't know so I got this book many years ago:

Electrical Wiring Residential by Ray C. Mullin.

This is the book that electricians learn from in school. If you buy it new its like $100+ but you can get a copy off of Ebay for $10. No joke. You don't need the latest one which has all the current electrical codes. The codes keep changing all the time. Any book from the last 10 years is good enough. As LEDs are evolving so rapidly they are not typically in the book anyway.

Yes Lumens is a funny thing. I have seen the same thing myself. Kelvin measures the color temperature of the light I typically try to install recessed lights of about 3500-4000 kelvin. To low a temperature the color of the light is more golden, to bright of a temperature - like 5000-6000 its very harsh bright bluefish light.

You can see the color of the light in this picture:

This is very cool. I buy around 5000K. I think sunlight is 3500K or so. I've noticed that all things being equal, 5500K and above actually generates more lumens - given the same Amps, the same everything but the color rendition really sucks.

I visited this local battery store, they happened to have some unusual LED bulbs. I got this weird green bulb on sale. For the X-mas season. Consumes just a few bucks annually. It's actually bright green neon type green, very light green, closer to white really than to green.

There is something about the design of the LED where they emit more lumens in the white to blue spectrum. And are less efficient in the 3500K spectrum.

Yes it is interesting. I bought LEDs for the recessed lights that were in the 3500-4000K range. The the light is quite bright but its not harsh, it looks very natural and color rendition looks normal.

From what I know LEDs are a type of semi-conductor so it might have to do with the manufacturing aspect of the silicon.

Actually LEDs do get hot but the heat is internal. It is not emitted forward with the light. I have a few custom torches that run well above 1000 lumens - sustained - and the essential component in the design is the heat sink. The flashlights have heavy brass or copper heatsinks. Cheaper Chiniese bulbs or torches vastly overstate lumens. They may generate 2000 lumens for 2 minutes and then drop to 800.

Heat is actually a serious problem with LEDS once you get above 800 lumens or so.